Education reform should start in the classroom, with the relationship between teacher and pupil. In this vein, high school math teacher Ben Orlin’s recent Atlantic piece “When Memorization Gets in the ...

Most medieval children never went to school. Education was reserved for boys headed toward the Church or administration. Lessons focused on memorization, religion, and obedience. Beatings were common ...

In my 29 years of teaching, I have often reflected on the balance between memorization and understanding. I recall one conversation where a math teacher shared the belief that “memorization no longer ...

Mathematics education in the United States puts far too much emphasis on memorization, says Stanford math education professor Jo Boaler. And that ultimately leads students to both misunderstand and ...

The idea of rote memorization is bound to tick some people off, which makes for nice discussion and debate. In all the very legitimate conversation about critical thinking, problem-solving, analysis, ...

Ask a student to memorize a formula, and AI can do it faster. But ask them to apply it to a real-world problem, and that’s where the future of rigor lies. For decades, rigor in advanced coursework ...

I suspect that I am in the same position as many others who teach at a university undergoing rapid enrollment increases. Most of my upper-level undergraduate courses have doubled in size since I began ...

Virginia Heffernan’s recent Times piece in defense of the pedagogical value of “drilling” made me wish, momentarily, that I’d gone to school during the American heyday of rote memorization. Recalling ...